MOSCOW, Oct 7 — "God save the Tsar!” was one of the first public birthday wishes for President Vladimir Putin who turns 72 today and who has been Russia’s paramount leader for nearly quarter of a century.

The greeting came from ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin on his Telegram messaging channel minutes after midnight.

Dugin, 62, has long advocated the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories in a vast new Russian empire, which he wants to include Ukraine, where Russia has been waging a war. Dugin’s daughter was killed in a suspected car bomb in 2022.

Putin, who ordered his troops to invade Ukraine in 2022, won a record post-Soviet landslide in a March election. His new six-year term, if completed, would make him Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years when tsars and empresses ruled the country. The victory cemented Putin’s already tight grip on power and, he said, showed Moscow had been right to stand up to the West and send its troops into Ukraine.

The West casts Putin as an autocrat and a killer. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the March vote that extended the rule of the former KGB spy illegitimate.

Putin portrays the war in Ukraine as part of a centuries-old battle with a declining West which he says humiliated Russia after the Cold War by encroaching on Moscow’s sphere of influence.

Kyiv and its Western allies call the war an imperialistic land grab. The conflict has killed thousands of civilians, the vast majority of them Ukrainians. It has turned cities into rubble and displaced millions.

"Today, friends, is the birthday of our national leader,” Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechen Republic who calls himself Putin’s "foot soldier,” wrote in a congratulatory message on Telegram at midnight on Monday.

"This is a significant day for our entire Fatherland.” — Reuters